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Aardwolf
Aardwolf *Solid Player Base (+300 daily online) *Unique Academy with Helpers and Advisors *Custom-Built Downloadable Client with Plugins *Quests and Goals *In-Game Maps *Fully functional Mindgate *Updated Regularly with new areas and goals www.aardwolf.com Aardwolf - A bit of History. Aardwolf was created back in the latter half of 1996 from the efforts of a dedicated Imm staff. Designed to be everything that a MUD could be, the current Imm team continues to work hard to bring as many improvements to Aardwolf as possible. Aardwolf is primarily designed to be a very friendly MUD, one with the enjoyment of its players uppermost in the Imms' minds. To this end, you can help by finding out what the rules are and adhering to them, as everyone here is expected to treat everyone else with at least some level of decorum. If you have never MUD'ed before, there are people here that have specifically been chosen for their ability to help new players. Known as Helpers and Advisors, these people have chosen to assist new players in getting involved with the world. There is a channel called Newbie that will allow you to pose questions to all the Helpers currently logged into the game. In addition, you may find the help file "help newhelp" of some assistance. Aardwolf is a restricted Player Kill (PK) MUD, and 99% of PK'ing on Aardwolf is harmless, with no permanent death penalties. There are help files for almost all of the skills and spells in the game. Information can be obtained by typing help by itself, or help subject. Also, the index command may prove helpful if you know the first few letters of a subject you'd like to read the help file for, but not the full name. Again, never be afraid to ask. There is, however, no help available regarding the elusive M I N D G A T E - for this you must discover on your own. Although the world of Aardwolf can be bewildering at first, it is worth the effort. The Immortals and players here are very proud of this MUD. If you hang around, you'll see why. We would love for you to connect to the world of Aardwolf. You can also keep up with us on our Twitter and Facebook pages. Lastly, to see some of the updates and changes that have been made, try help history. We sincerely hope that you enjoy the time that you spend at Aardwolf, and help to make it a place where others can do the same. To connect or to learn more, we can be reached at www.aardwolf.com External Sites www.aardwolf.com www.aardwolf.com/wiki www.twitter.com/aardmud www.facebook.com/aardwolfmud The Client Aardwolf has its own unique client and plug-ins. The Aardwolf client is a version of the popular free Mushclient, customized for Aardwolf. Using a MUD client is the recommended way to play Aardwolf - you see a much better overview of the game and many tools are available to help manage your character's progress. Nothing else is installed (spyware, etc) and no information is tracked by the client. If you already have a MUD client, the connection information for Aardwolf MUD is aardmud.org port 23. The IP address is 208.43.193.234. If you are unable to connect on port 23, Aardwolf MUD also runs on ports 4000, 4010, 4444 and 7777. The Clans Clans are a group of players following a common theme or goal and are a very important part of Aardwolf. Clans have many features not commonly found among other worlds: their own donation, healing, jail, and recall rooms; separate bank accounts into which members can deposit gold and quest points; optional tax rates to raise income from their members; clan-only skills and spells; clan morgues, where members' corpses go upon death; clan equipment, including armor, potions, and transporters; clan guards and mazes; and exits to some of the harder or more distant places in the MUD to reach. Each clan has specific requirements for joining, promotions, and remaining in that clan. These are decided upon by the clan when it is created, but may change slightly over time. You can find these shortnames and a list of the current clans by typing clist in-game. There are currently 34 player clans on Aardwolf.---- Joining a clan is not something to be undertaken lightly; once in a clan, the only way to leave is to become an outcast (see 'help outcast'). Players that decide they will never want to be part of a clan can choose to become a loner (see 'help loner'). Players that want to join a clan without having to deal with PK life can seek out NoPK clans. These are indicated by a Y in the NoPK column in clist. More information on NoPK clans can be found in 'help nopk'. The immortals of Aardwolf also comprise a special clan, The Wolf Administration. The Classes Everyone needs to have some sort of profession. This is what the classes let you do in the game. You are an adventurer by default, but your specific style of adventuring needs to be chosen. If you prefer to grab a big axe and cut your way through enemies then you probably should be a warrior. If you wish to delve into the arcane arts of magic, then a mage is the right path for you. Aardwolf has seven distinct classes, all with unique skills and spells they can develop. Each makes for a different gaming experience. Don't worry if you cant decide, you are able to switch classes and become a multi-classed individual once you reach level 201. This process is called remorting. The Subclasses Subclasses are a new twist in Aardwolf. We keep telling you Aardwolf is unique, check this out... Each of the seven main classes are currently under development for subclasses. There are four subclasses per main class. Sound confusing? Not really. You are always going to be strongest in your primary class. Your subclass is going to add unique skills that only that subclass has... Thieves, for example, have assassins who get an extra backstab hit, while bandits have the opportunity to entrap a room into a PK situation. You can imagine all the fun this exciting twist will add to the game. Want to see more about subclasses? Check out this link: http://www.aardwolf.com/wiki/index.php/Main/Subclasses Backed by Lua Aardwolf features a Lua compiler fully integrated with the MUD, allowing areas builders to create atmosphere and diverse challenges in their areas. Most attributes of players, mobiles, rooms, objects and areas are visibile within the Lua environment. With the core of Aardwolf codebase handling resource-intensive actions on the back-end, and the power of Lua on the front-end, we are very excited about the possibilities this will open up. This has been essential for our builders to create area quests and goals within their areas to give it more flavor. The RP We admit it. Aardwolf is not a roleplay community. Some find it refreshing; others find it frustrating. We try to be as upfront and honest about it as possible - it really is not our strong suit. Some adaptations have been made, but the code base is not designed to be the most RP-friendly.There are a few sources available for role-playing on Aardwolf. These include the RP channel (toggled by typing IC or RP), and the Roleplay board (see 'help board' and 'help note' to participate). There are also various writing contests sponsored by players and Immortals at different times. While Imms police these channels for MUD rules as any other, there is no policing of actual in-character (IC) content on the RP channel. Please feel free to act IC to your own contentment, so long as it falls withing normal game rules; do not be upset, however, if you do not find the same from everyone else. If RP is truly important to you, we recommend going to www.mudconnect.com and search under roleplay - there are a lot of great MUDs out that fully support RP style of play. The VI (Visually Impaired Information) Aardwolf has a very strong visually impaired following. When the immortal staff realized this, they worked with the visually impaired players to create helpfiles to reduce spam, work with screen readers, and even make maps that can be run through a JAWS program so they are no more disadvantaged than any other player. It has been an incredible journey working with these players - They would be at a severe disadvantage playing a game that relied on pictures. By working together, we have created an equal playing field. For those interested in a visually impaired client, we have been told that there is a VIP Client located at www.gmagames.com. If you prefer MUSH, or use the Aardwolf client, there is a plugin for the JAWS Screen Reader that can be found at www.allinaccess.com/mc/. The plugin renders it unnecessary to turn off color and various levels of spam. The DIKU MUD. Or rather, the DIKU-free MUD. Anyone who knows their general MUD history knows why this is here and would inevitably become a question sooner or later. Aardwolf was developed to look as similar to the old game as possible which may lead to some questions on whether it really is a unique codebase at all. Several points on this: *We have extensive CVS logs showing the development of the MUD over a number of years. These logs show steady progress from a 500 line basic socket driver through to the current 150,000 lines+ that is Aardwolf V3. *We have fixed hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of bugs that were reported by player testers, things that already work just fine in Diku/ROM. Deliberately coding these bugs to 'appear different' would be a massive waste of time and arguably will take longer to do intentionally than rewriting the MUD did in the first place. *Even if we were inclined to do that, it wouldn't work. You can't hide an entire codebase. Too many subtle bugs. Too many things too easily noticeable. BTW, feel free to use tildes all you like in V3 :) Perhaps most importantly, wanting to clear any confusion early on, we asked Hans Henrik Staerfeldt, one of the original DIKU authors, to review our code and give feedback on whether or not it is a DIKU derivative. Hans reviewed an early version of our code in 2004, stated that it clearly was not, but wanted to see a more final version. Hans reviewed a final version of our code in January 2008 and his statement, quoted exactly, is below: "Having reviewed the Aardwolf MUD code, and evaluated this aginst the DikuMud source distribution, I must say that your code is very nice. Apart from the parsing of old VNUMS, and the _notion_ of having a string substitution system with AN/A HIS/HER etc (which is a rather obvious notion), as well as the notion of bit-vectors - I see very little likeness with DikuMud. Certainly the code itself is indeed independent from the DikuMud distribution (which is the important part), the only things that are used are design patterns which are obvious for this sort of application (its is after all doing many of the same things, as one would expect a MUD to do). " --Hans Henrik Staerfeldt Also related, as part of bugging Hans to do this in the first place even though he was short of time, the following extract is from an email to him: Understand you're busy but I can think of no better person to do this. If it helps, we're not looking for you to "certify" that you have reviewed every line of code in detail and it is not Diku, more that you've seen enough of the MUD and its structures to be comfortable it is not a DIKU based MUD." -- Lasher The response to this was: ''"You were perhaps not looking to do this, but I wanted to do it to make very sure. Im like that :^P ''It is reasonable to assume from this that Hans was thorough in his review before making the statement above. According to Lasher, he stated "This whole page may be redundant and unnecessary, but if it can allow us to focus on building a great game rather than debating speculation, it serves its purpose. We will not publish his email address here but anyone capable of using Google can find Hans and ask for themselves if they feel so inclined." Diku Free. Interesting Concept! External links and further reading *Aardwolf wiki *The Inexplicable Allure of MUDs *Rise and Shiny: Aardwolf MUD *What World of Warcraft can Learn from MUDs *An Introduction to MUDs *Master's Thesis on Gender Identity as Explored through Aardwolf *Aardwolf Review at Explosion *When Art Is Put Into Play: A Practice-based Research Project on Game Art. PhD Dissertation that touches on Aardwolf Category:MU* games Category:MUDs